Platform on civil engineering, underground infrastructure, energy, construction equipment & construction machinery
Moving with the times, circumstances and state of the art. With this in mind, the members of the Dutch Federation of Safety Companies (FVN) have requested a revision of NEN 6098. The standard does in fact lay down rules for testing smoke control systems in mechanically ventilated parking garages, but does not (yet) provide specific assessment criteria for electric and hydrogen cars, for example. In addition, the way in which the fire department performs its deployment has changed.
“NEN 6098 has been in existence since 2012 and describes very specifically how smoke control systems in parking garages should be designed to effectively exhaust smoke and ensure the safety of users and emergency services,” says Stan Veldpaus, a member of FVN's Smoke Control Systems Working Group and Project Advisor for Smoke Control Systems at Kingspan Light + Air. “The standard focuses specifically on parking garages equipped with a mechanical ventilation system, which is important in controlling smoke in the event of a fire. However, the standard is now thirteen years old, and a lot has changed in that time. Just think of the rise of electric cars (and in the future, perhaps, hydrogen cars). But also to the fire department, which is increasingly retreating with regard to fire ventilation in parking garages and is increasingly actively pursuing sprinkler systems. For example, about three years ago, an additional article was included in the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving (Bbl), which states that parking garages larger than 1,000 m² and located under residential buildings with a height of more than thirteen meters must by definition be equipped with a sprinkler system. This changes the fire behavior, which the new NEN 6098 standard must anticipate.”
The FVN has about two hundred specialized companies in the technical fire and security sector. Part of this includes smoke control systems, whose members have united to revise NEN 6098. “Besides the aforementioned changing circumstances, the content of the standard is mainly to blame,” Veldpaus said. “Because you cannot achieve good smoke control systems with the standard alone. While the standard sets requirements for the design of the system, it does not set requirements for its proper construction. It helps determine the correct ventilation flow rates and makes a small statement about the classification of the fans, but then another document (the code of practice NPR 6095-1) is needed to determine where the control cabinet should be located, how the transmission paths should be laid and how the power supply should be arranged. We would like to see these chapters from the code of practice included in the new NEN standard soon, so that we can design, dimension and realize the installation with one clear standard.”
The desire to revise NEN 6098 has now been reported to the Royal Dutch Standards Institute (NEN) Foundation, which will produce a Plan of Action and quotation for this purpose. “It is then up to us to raise the funds for this,” Veldpaus said. “A nice starting point here is that the concerned members of the Federation Safe Netherlands want to guarantee at least part of the costs.”
During the review process, the NEN has primarily a secretarial function. It facilitates the invitations for the meetings, takes care of the reporting and ensures that all documents are stored in a central location so that they can be consulted by all relevant parties. “In addition, she handles the publicity surrounding the review,” Veldpaus said. “For example, with the aim of recruiting sufficient working group members. In order to create a good new standard, sufficient support is essential. But also that the right people come to the table to write the new standard. Besides the FVN members you can think of inspection institutes, consultancies, the fire department, insurers and end users. Readers who want to participate in this are cordially invited to get in touch.”
For example, the working group will map which cars are found in our parking garages today and which fuels or drives are coming. What fires can we expect in our parking garages? And in that context, are the starting points for the design of the smoke control system still realistic? Should revisions be made regarding power curves, fire spread rates, et cetera? For example, due to the (growing) number of electric and hydrogen cars? “In doing so, we also make recommendations for improvement.”
When the document is ready, it will be presented to the NEN standards committee 351007 Fire Safety Construction Works. “It will see if what the working group has written is acceptable,” Veldpaus said. “If the standards committee agrees, then the standard goes out to the market for assessment. The resulting comments are reviewed, assessed and - if justified - processed by the working group. Depending on the impact of this, the document goes back into the market for assessment and/or is presented to the standards committee for final evaluation, on the basis of which we hope to present a revised standard in 2027.”
